


A Beauty Calm and Clear

by samyazaz



Series: The Subtle Grace of Gravity [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Epilogue, Healing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 07:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7968334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samyazaz/pseuds/samyazaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras walks for the better part of the day, until the sun has passed its zenith and even the vast, towering bulk of the ship is out of view, and all that’s around him is land and sky, vast mountains in the distance and clouds that pile up on the horizon even taller than the peaks, wind blowing through his hair and brief glimpses of animals he can’t name, because no man has ever laid eyes on them before. He stands alone in the middle of all that space, so much more vast than even the enormity of their ship and with not a single other person in sight, and he tips his head back and laughs up at the sky above him, delirious and delighted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beauty Calm and Clear

They landed too late to plant crops, it turns out, according to Grantaire’s calculations of their new home’s orbit and axial tilt and all the data still coming in from the various probes they dropped around the planet. But the vast arrays of crops growing on upsilon level has been sufficient to feed them all for generations, and that hasn’t changed just because they’re on solid ground and no longer hurtling through the black of space. They won’t starve, and meanwhile, the time they don’t yet have to spend learning how to farm they spend instead exploring their new home.

He doesn’t do it in the first days, or even the first few weeks, because there are still structures and infrastructures to build and undercurrents of tension between the people and– Enjolras makes a point of not calling them Security, there’s no Security anymore and such labels will only divide them. But in any case, between those claiming their autonomy and those accustomed to the trappings of power. He stays close until things have settled, until _they’ve_ settled, and then one day when everything’s quiet and the sun is warm on his skin even as the air prickles against it, and the itch within his bones has grown too great to ignore any longer, he walks away from their camp until his legs are weary, and then even farther, pushing through the stitch that develops in his side and delighting in the way the sweat gathers and drips down his back from the exertion, and how the cool chill of the air becomes a soothing balm as his body warms with the exercise. He walks for the better part of the day, until the sun has passed its zenith and even the vast, towering bulk of the ship is out of view, and all that’s around him is land and sky, vast mountains in the distance and clouds that pile up on the horizon even taller than the peaks, wind blowing through his hair and brief glimpses of animals he can’t name, because no man has ever laid eyes on them before. He stands alone in the middle of all that space, so much more vast than even the enormity of their ship and with not a single other person in sight, and he tips his head back and laughs up at the sky above him, delirious and delighted.

He turns back, then, somewhat reluctantly. But the day’s more than half gone and he still has the long walk home to finish, before night comes and he finds himself stranded and lost in the dark. 

An hour in, much too early for dusk, the skies above him go dark and the wind kicks up until it whips his hair into his face. He tilts his head back and finds that the distant piles of clouds have caught up to him, and though they’d looked white and pillowy on the horizon, now they’re black and angry. He fights off a shiver at another gust of wind, and quickens his pace.

Halfway back, the clouds open up and dump water down upon him, heavy sheets of it, so sudden and so shocking that Enjolras freezes midstride, gasping and shivering all at once.

He’s soaked through within minutes, and soon his boots caked thick and heavy with the mud that squelches underfoot. Now there’s rain coursing down his spine rather than sweat, rivers of it, and into his eyes and off his chin, and by the time he’s near enough to the ship to see it, he strongly suspects he’s hypothermic – a condition they’d learned about in the wards, but never taken more than an academic interest in, because the ship was climate controlled and there were so many other ways that the void of space would kill you before the coldness could.

Now he shivers, and his teeth chatter violently, and when he finally comes staggering back into camp, half-blind and feeling more than half-drowned, Grantaire comes running at him and collides with him with an impact that might have knocked him off his feet entirely, if he hadn’t been embracing him so tightly. “Where did you _go_ , you didn’t even tell anyone and I couldn’t even connect to your ‘screen, and then the storm came in–”

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras says, leaning in against Grantaire’s chest and glorying in the warmth of him and the way standing so close means half of him is no longer getting rained on. 

“Come on,” Grantaire says, gruff, and pulls away to catch him by the hand and drag him toward the ship. “Come inside. You’ll catch your death.”

“That’s Old World superstition,” Enjolras protests.

“Not when you feel like you’ve just walked out of cryostorage, it isn’t.” Grantaire drags him straight into the nearest shower facility, strips him bare in efficient movements and stands him under the spray without even bothering with his own clothing.

The water feels at once scalding and miraculous, and somehow sends Enjolras shivering even harder against him, as though it’s only now that his body has remembered what it’s like to be warm again that it’s realized just how cold it was.

Grantaire holds him as the chills take him, helping to support his weight, and then as they ease, until at least Enjolras feels as though he’s warm through to his bones, and he steps back and wipes the water out of his eyes.

“Better?” Grantaire asks, eyeing him uncertainly, and at his nod, shuts the water off and wraps him in a thick towel. “Good. What in heaven’s name were you _thinking?_ ”

Enjolras takes a second towel of his own volition, and begins scrubbing it through his hair. “I was alone,” he says, and even now, in the face of Grantaire’s worry and disapproval, he can’t help the rapturous way he says it. “It was…”

“Foolish,” Grantaire supplies.

“ _Incredible,_ ” Enjolras says. “I’ve never been. Not like that.”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says, pained, and for a moment Enjolras thinks it’s because he’s been heartless, talking about the joys of solitude to someone who was trapped in it for centuries. But then Grantaire sighs and takes Enjolras’s face between his hands and kisses him on the brow, and says, “Next time, _tell someone_ where you’re going, or at least what you plan. And maybe consider asking me what the forecast looks like. What’s the point of knowing how to calculate the chance of precipitation, otherwise?”

“I forgot,” Enjolras admits, and that _was_ stupid. But he’s never had to spare a thought for weather before they landed here, and old habits die hard. “I will,” he says at Grantaire’s disapproving look. “I promise. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

That, at last, drains the last of Grantaire’s ire from him. He pulls Enjolras in and kisses his brow again, and then his mouth, and says, “You’d better,” with a solid finality.

Enjolras doesn’t get the chance. That first storm ushers in a series of them behind it, and the temperature plummets with each passing day until everyone’s forced to retreat from the shelters they’ve built and take up residence inside the ship once more as winter descends upon them with a fury and a force that’s incredible. 

It’s during those long, dark months that Joly comes to them one day, leaning hard on his cane and smelling faintly of chemicals, but smiling, and informs them that he and Combeferre have finished the last batch of the antiviral, the last that they need to finish their inoculations.

Grantaire’s breath goes sharp, and then unsteady, and he fingers Feuilly’s pendant around his neck as he says, “That’s good to know. Thank you,” but he leaves the projection in place, and makes no mention of deactivating it, or removing the pendant.

Enjolras doesn’t press. He doesn’t ask, but sometimes he catches Grantaire in a quiet moment, worrying at the pendant. Sometimes he looks thoughtful, or hopeful. Sometimes he looks so terrified that it breaks Enjolras’s heart. He tries to distract Grantaire, then, and take his mind off of the fears that eat at him, but he still doesn’t press. 

They’re all trapped inside the ship one day as a snowstorm blows through camp when Grantaire seeks him out, takes him by the hand and leads him wordlessly to one of the vacant detainment cells and shuts the door behind them, then hangs a cloth up over the window so they’re entirely alone. Grantaire sits on the cot and fiddles with his pendant and says, “Would– would you like to see?”

Enjolras sits abruptly. “Yes,” he says, and hardly dares breathe.

Grantaire’s gaze is downcast, on the floor at their feet. “I told Joly and Combeferre that I was going to ask. That I was going to…offer. They’re waiting, and they can come. They’ll be here in a moment if I tell them. If–if we need them.”

_If I hurt you,_ Grantaire means, and Enjolras doesn’t bother trying to reassure him that he won’t. It’s only ever made him more distressed, before. So he takes Grantaire’s hand in his, the one not wrapped around the pendant, and squeezes it gently. “Please,” he says, and waits.

Grantaire worries at the pendant a moment longer, and then there’s a scarcely-audible click, and Grantaire seems to waver and flicker in Enjolras’s vision, like an unsteady video signal going staticky before cutting out.

His hair is shorter, a soft fuzz just barely long enough to begin to curl, and it makes the curls of wiring more prominent. The gold lines of circuitry make different patterns across his face and cheeks and down his throat than the ones Enjolras is used to and the shape of his nose is different, a little wider.

He still looks like Grantaire. Different, but recognizable, like another artist’s rendering of the same man. Enjolras hadn’t meant to be worried about it, but he loses his breath all the same, and throws himself forward to wrap his arms around Grantaire’s neck. “I’m fine,” he breathes, there against the warm skin of his neck when Grantaire is hesitant to return the embrace. “I’m fine. Thank you for trusting me.”

Grantaire sets him back and makes a face. “It’s more trusting Joly and Combeferre. Floreal, maybe. Trusting the antiviral to have done its job.”

“Thank you,” Enjolras says again, and leans in to kiss him, and leaves his eyes open so he can see what it looks like on this new face. On his true face.

He reveals himself to more people slowly, over the course of the winter. His confidence grows with each one. By the end of the season, he’s stopped wearing the projection entirely, though he still has Feuilly’s pendant around his neck, and is prone to grab at it in times of stress or confrontation.

When the snows melt with the coming of spring, everyone finds themselves abruptly busy trying to till grassland into fields and plant seeds and fuss over the tiny, delicate sprouts of their first crops. It’s a hectic time, and an exhausting one, but in the midst of it Grantaire finds an opportunity to pull Enjolras away. “Take a walk with me?” he asks, and he’s got his pendant gripped tight in a fist, so Enjolras excuses himself from those he’s working with and rises and falls into step at his side. He takes Grantaire’s free hand wordlessly, and Grantaire grips him like he’s clinging to a lifeline, and they walk away from camp together without speaking a word.

They don’t walk so far as Enjolras did, the day of their first big storm, but they go far enough that the ship is out of sight and they have the illusion of isolation, though when the breeze changes they can sometimes catch the faint, indistinct sound of voices carried upon it.

Grantaire brings them to a stop at the edge of a cliff, the rock broken and crumbled away before their feet. He pulls the pendant off over his head and then stares down at it, lying small and innocuous in the middle of his palm. “This seemed a miracle, when you all first made this for me,” he says softly. His fingers twitch a little, like he wants to grab back onto it. “And then it seemed a burden.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Enjolras tells him.

Grantaire gives a short hiccup of a laugh. “I don’t know what I want. I want to be safe. I want to be sure. I– I want to be _me_. As much as I can be.”

They both there’s only so much they can do towards that aim. They can’t undo what Security did to him, or unmake what he’s become. But there isn’t _nothing_ they can do. Enjolras has been working towards that aim from the start. This is the next step in that journey, but it’s not one Enjolras can take for him.

He stands with him, hand in hand in silent support while Grantaire wrestles with his choice.

It takes him a long time to come to a decision, but once it’s made, it’s made abruptly. Grantaire straightens, his head coming up and his shoulders pulling back, and with a swift gesture he chucks the pendant over the cliff’s edge. It’s a long moment before they hear it shatter on the stones below. 

Enjolras wants to craw, wants to pull him close and kiss him, wants to throw his head back and shout his joy up to the sky above. He doesn’t know how Grantaire would take it, though, so he pulls him into an embrace instead, and when they part, he ruffles his hand through the fuzz of curls on his head.

Grantaire ducks his head and smiles, and laughs beneath his breath, and even when the laughter’s faded, the smile doesn’t.

“Are you ready to go back?” Enjolras asks him.

“Yes,” Grantaire says, and wraps an arm around his shoulders as they begin the walk together. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
